International police network launch campaign to prevent young people from committing cybercrime

For young people with digital skills, the barrier to enter the world of cybercrime is low. To warn about the dangers and consequences, the police have launched a cybercrime offender prevention campaign. The campaign videos are being shown in as many as eighteen countries on YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Two boys are staring intensely at their screens. In their own bedrooms, they’re playing a shooter game against each other. At one point, one of them pumps his fist in the air to celebrate the victory. The other is absolutely gutted by the loss. Frustrated, he launches a DDOS attack. His cyberattack subsequently shuts down stores, large companies, and hospitals. Not long after, he sees the flashing lights of a police car through the curtains. The message: “DDOS-Attacks are illegal and have consequences. Choose the right path.”

It’s a scene from one of two videos launched worldwide to prevent young people from taking the wrong turn online towards cybercrime. From Finland to Brazil and from Hungary to Australia, young people are being warned in this way. “This warning happens far too rarely online,” says project lead Maurice van der Stoel. He is an intervention specialist at the Cyber Offender Prevention Squad from Team High Tech Crime of the Netherlands police. ‘In the offline world, norms are constantly being established for young people. If a child pushes someone, they’re told that it’s not allowed and that there will be consequences if it happens again. In the online world, this rarely happens, so young people don’t know what the norm is, let alone what the consequences are.’

Less cyberattacks

The threshold to taking the wrong path is very low. Says Van der Stoel: “On Google, you can easily find out what is needed to execute a cyberattack. It’s our job as law enforcement not only to warn young people about the consequences if they become victims of cybercrime, but also if they are the perpetrators themselves. This prevention campaign is intended to reduce the number of cyberattacks carried out by young people.”

This is not the first time law enforcement has run a campaign. After a similar ad campaign in 2018 in the United Kingdom, Cambridge University performed research on the effects of the campaign. The result: there was a correlation between the preventive video for young people and the decline in the number of DDOS-attacks in the UK. ‘We are also conducting a scientific data analysis in cooperation with academics’, Van der Stoel said. ‘In doing so, we are looking not only at the impact on the participating countries, but also at countries that are not part of this initiative.’

InterCOP

Because cybercrime knows no borders, the Netherlands Police founded InterCOP, the International Cyber Offender Prevention Network, which now has 44 members. Within the network, countries were invited to participate in this prevention campaign. Van der Stoel: ‘We have used AI to make the project scalable. The videos were created using artificial intelligence. The content is in English, but in each country the videos are played in the local language. This allows us to implement the intervention on a much broader scale and with greater effectiveness.’ The campaign is co-funded by the European Union.

In addition to its preventive message for young people, the campaign has another goal: “Big tech companies have a responsibility to screen their platforms for illegal content. Right now, it’s far too easy to find information on how to commit cybercrimes. That barrier needs to be raised significantly. We want to reach out again to companies like Google to have this kind of information removed. In our fight against cybercrime, we really need their help—just as we need the support of local governments, schools, parents, grandparents, and everyone else. Only by working together can we protect our young people.”